Tag Archives: SRW Class

The basic building blocks of romance fiction are conflicts: internal, external, and romantic. Strong conflicts drive readers to keep reading in order to discover who wins.

No matter how beautiful the writing is, if the conflict isn’t strong enough, the reader will get bored and go read something else. Great conflicts, on the other hand, can turn a book into a bestseller and an author into an autobuy.

New York Times bestselling author Angela Knight explains how she designs conflicts for maximum punch, then uses them to construct a climax that is both unpredictable and powerful. She provides students with worksheets they can use to design their own conflicts, then determine how to resolve them in an emotionally satisfying way.

Lessons in this month-long online class will be posted on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. They include:

Introduction: The importance of Conflict

What is Conflict?

The Three forms of Conflict in Romance

Conflict as the Building Blocks of Character

Internal Conflict as the Key to Three-Dimensional Characters

Romantic Conflict as the Spine of the Romance

External Conflict as the Bones of the Plot

Using Each type of Conflict to Complicate the Others

Building the Plot from Conflict Events

Writing powerful Turning Points for Conflicts

Writing Conflict Resolutions

Using the Resolutions of the Internal and Romantic Conflicts in the External Climax.

Conclusion

About the Instructor

Angela Knight is the New York Times bestselling author of books for Berkley, Red Sage, and Changeling Press. Her first book was written in pencil and illustrated in crayon; she was nine years old at the time. A few years later, she read The Wolf and the Dove and fell in love with romance. Besides her fiction work, Angela’s publishing career includes a stint as a comic book writer and ten years as a newspaper reporter. Several of her stories won South Carolina Press Association awards under her real name.

In 1996, she discovered the small press publisher Red Sage, and realized her dream of romance publication in the company’s Secrets 2 anthology. She went on to publish several more novellas in Secrets before editor Cindy Hwang discovered her work there and asked her if she’d be interested in writing for Berkley. Not being an idiot, Angela said yes.

Angela lives in South Carolina with her husband, Michael, a polygraph examiner and hostage negotiator for the county’s Sheriff’s Office. The couple have a grown son, Anthony.

Shortly before the class begins, the moderator will send you an invitation to join the group. The invitation will be sent to the email shown on your PayPal payment, so if you wish to use a different email address or have questions, please contact OnlineClassModerator@TucsonRWA.org.

Registration requires 48 hours to process. It is your responsibility to mark your calendars and iron out any difficulties joining the Yahoo group. No refunds, except in the case of class cancellation

Do You Have an Online Class you’d like to offer through SRW? We’re always looking for the best educational opportunities to offer our members. Contact OnlineClassProposals@TucsonRWA.org

Dynamic dialogue can sell a book that might otherwise be ignored. That’s because dialogue reaches right out to the human in us all, the one that wants contact and conversation, and if you do that well, the reader will overlook a host of other faults. So in this interactive workshop, we’ll explore practical techniques to make sure your dialogue forcefully conveys the individual voices of your characters, and purposefully pushes your plot.

In this intensive two-week class, we’ll discuss:

Dialogue as characterization

Dialogue as plot-action interaction

Listen up now (The Sound of Your Dialogue)

Make it move, set it up

Dialogue isn’t just speech. It’s conversation– action and interaction, cause and effect, stimulus and response. In this class, you’ll learn how to turbocharge those exchanges between characters with background action, introspection, judicious pauses, quote tags, and of course, vivid and individual speech.

Make your dialogue dynamic. Make it move. Make it meaningful. Make it matter.

NOTE: This is an intensive class, with a lot of material and optional assignments–great for beginners and experienced students alike, but not for writers who want quick and easy solutions. You can interact as little or as much as you like, but for those who participate, Alicia will review each assignment and provide feedback. Fun, fast, and fruitful feedback. :)

Instructor Bio

Alicia Rasley is the author of The Power of Point of View and The Story Within Plotbook. Her novel, The Year She Fell, was released from Belle Books and became a Kindle bestseller. She earned her MA in English Literature from Butler University, with the thesis The Family Vault: Women Buried Alive in Poe’s Short Fiction.

Class begins October 29, runs two weeks, and will be conducted via Yahoo group. Register by paying the course fee ($30 SRW members, $40 nonmembers) on our Payments page. No Refunds, except in the case class is cancelled.

Shortly before the class begins, the moderator will send you an invitation to join the group. The invitation will be sent to the email shown on your PayPal payment, so if you wish to use a different email address or have questions, please contact OnlineClassModerator@TucsonRWA.org.

Registration requires 48 hours to process. It is your responsibility to mark your calendars and iron out any difficulties joining the Yahoo group. No refunds, except in the case of class cancellation.

Do You Have an Online Class you’d like to offer through SRW? We’re always looking for the best educational opportunities to offer our members. Contact OnlineClassProposals@TucsonRWA.org

Sprinkle and blend the flavours of your character to achieve an irresistible aroma….

Have you been accused of too much telling or information dumps? Does your character have a fascinating history, but you’re not sure how best to convey it to readers? Avoid the pitfalls of backstory by peeling back the layers one at a time to discover the most effective delivery methods, how much to use, and how to make it drive the main story.

Learning outcomes:

Understand how to use backstory to develop tension and engage readers.

Know where your character came from and is headed, so the backstory is consistent and relevant.

Determine which parts of the backstory are important, and which are just filler.

Be able to identify where backstory isn’t working.

Learn techniques to reveal backstory as part of the story, instead of information dumping.

Know when to release backstory for maximum effect.

Avoid backstory taking over the whole story.

Use backstory as a baseline from which to show character growth.

This popular workshop combines colourful handouts, tailored feedback, videos and live chats to engage participants. There will be plenty of opportunities to apply the learnings to individual work.

Sandy is a strong believer that learning outcomes are increased through collaboration and sharing, so she encourages this in a safe and nurturing environment; however, those who aren’t comfortable with sharing, are welcome to email their homework separately.

What people are saying about Sandy’s workshops:

“Helpful, practical and inspirational, Sandy’s workshop took my writing to the next level.”

“I loved Sandy’s dedication to giving the best feedback possible. It’s made a huge difference to me already.”

​“I liked the friendly nature of the learning experience.”

“The workshop was well structured, with information provided at an appropriate pace to enable participants to absorb it and apply it to their own work.”

How to Register:

Online class runs from August 20th to September 16th, 2018, and will be conducted via Yahoo group. Register by paying the course fee ($30 SRW members, $40 nonmembers) on our Payments page. No Refunds, except in the case class is cancelled.

Shortly before the class begins, the moderator will send you an invitation to join the group. The invitation will be sent to the email shown on your PayPal payment, so if you wish to use a different email address or have questions, please contact classes@tucsonrwa.org.

Registration requires 48 hours to process. It is your responsibility to mark your calendars and iron out any difficulties joining the Yahoo group. No refunds, except in the case of class cancellation.

During our May online workshop, Angela Knight discusses the techniques she uses to brainstorm, plot, write and revise a 50-page paranormal romance short story. She dissects each step of the process in detail so you can feel confident using the same techniques to write your own books. She also explains how to use the same principles to write a novel of any length. In the series of lessons, she covers characterization, the creation of romantic, internal and external conflicts, and how to write fiction that excites readers and editors alike.

Topics include

Introduction

Brainstorming the initial idea; how I decide what kind of story to write, how long it will be, and which publisher to target it to.

Designing the hero (and villain, if there is one.) This lesson will discuss how to construct the three forms of conflict for the hero: inner conflict, external conflict, and romantic conflict. I’ll also provide a character template I use.

Designing the heroine (same structure)

Brainstorming the plot and the paranormal world

Beginning – How to establish sympathetic heroes and heroines, while simultaneously putting them in conflict with each other and the villain (if there is one).

Middle – How to ensure their efforts to resolve their conflicts only make matters worse.

Climax – Resolving the conflict in a believable way that doesn’t result in an anticlimax.

First rewrite – The methods I use for the first rewrite, including adding sensual detail, plugging logic holes, etc.

Grammar, comma placement and working with editors – Why you can’t assume an editor will fix your grammatical mistakes – and what to do when the editor requests changes.

Novels: expanding this technique for novel length works. How to construct conflicts and characters complicated enough for 100,000 words.

Summing everything up. I’ll also touch on how to submit your work to publishers, and how to deal with publishers in a professional way.

Instructor Bio:

Angela Knight is the New York Times bestselling author of books for Berkley, Red Sage, and Changeling Press. Her first book was written in pencil and illustrated in crayon; she was nine years old at the time. A few years later, she read The Wolf and the Dove and fell in love with romance. Besides her fiction work, Angela’s publishing career includes a stint as a comic book writer and ten years as a newspaper reporter. Several of her stories won South Carolina Press Association awards under her real name.

In 1996, she discovered the small press publisher Red Sage, and realized her dream of romance publication in the company’s Secrets 2 anthology. She went on to publish several more novellas in Secrets before editor Cindy Hwang discovered her work there and asked her if she’d be interested in writing for Berkley. Not being an idiot, Angela said yes.

Angela lives in South Carolina with her husband, Michael, a polygraph examiner and hostage negotiator for the county’s Sheriff’s Office. The couple have a grown son, Anthony.

Shortly before the class begins, the moderator will send you an invitation to join the group. The invitation will be sent to the email shown on your PayPal payment, so if you wish to use a different email address or have questions, please contact classes@tucsonrwa.org.

Registration requires 48 hours to process. It is your responsibility to mark your calendars and iron out any difficulties joining the Yahoo group by contacting classes@tucsonrwa.org before class begins.

A series can be a great way to launch a career and hook readers on your writing. Keeping readers coming back for more while managing multiple titles, series and genres can be somewhat overwhelming without a clear strategy in mind. As the author of five New York Times bestselling series currently at various stages, Marie Force offers some secrets to keeping multiple balls in the air at the same time. This topic will be useful for authors who have several titles to manage and are looking to grow their following. Marie will share some of the tricks of what works for her and how she’s “trained” herself to write two—and sometimes THREE—books at the same time. Marie likes to say that a successful series is the gift that keeps on giving for an author!

This one-week class runs February 19 – 23, 2018 and will be conducted via a Facebook group. Cost is $20 for SRW members, $25.00 nonmembers.

Marie Force is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 60 contemporary romances, including the Gansett Island Series and the Fatal Series from Harlequin Books. In addition, she is the author of the Butler, Vermont Series, the Green Mountain Series and the erotic romance Quantum Series. All together, her books have sold 6 million copies worldwide!

Her goals in life are simple—to finish raising two happy, healthy, productive young adults, to keep writing books for as long as she possibly can and to never be on a flight that makes the news.

This online class will be conducted via Facebook group. You must have a Facebook account to participate.

To register for a class, go Payments and enter your name, Facebook ID, and the name of the class you want to take. Shortly before the class begins, the moderator will send you an invitation to join the Facebook group. If you have questions, please contact classes@tucsonrwa.org.

Whether it’s the first rejection, the 50th-book slump, or just not getting the story you want, frustration is part of every writer’s life. For some, it’s a nuisance; for others, it’s the end of a career. For anyone determined to make 2018 a Better Writing Year, this class offers both practical and psychological techniques for dealing with rejection, writer’s block, frustration, motivation, and other issues that keep writers from loving their craft.

Class runs January 2 – 26, 2018 and will be conducted via email in a Yahoo group. Cost is $20 for SRW members, $25.00 nonmembers.

SRW favorite Laurie Schnebly Campbell loves giving workshops for writer groups about “Psychology for Creating Characters,” “Making Rejection WORK For You,” “Building A Happy Relationship For Your Characters (And Yourself)” and other issues that draw on her background as a counseling therapist and romance writer.

Although she enjoyed writing her own books, including one that beat out Nora Roberts for “Best Special Edition of the Year,” she enjoys teaching even more. That’s why she now has fifteen novels on her bookshelf with acknowledgments from authors inspired by her classes!

About SRW Online Classes

This online class will be conducted via Yahoo Groups, giving you the flexibility to read class lectures and emails online or in your mailbox (individual emails or digests). Your instructor will post lectures and comments on homework assignments on the group loop. We encourage you to actively participate in the classes to get the most benefit from them, but lurking is fine as well.

To register for a class, go Payments and enter your name and name of the class you want to take. Shortly before the class begins, the moderator will send you an invitation to join the class Yahoo group. The invitation will be sent to the email shown on your PayPal payment, so if you wish to use a different email address or have questions, please contact classes@tucsonrwa.org.

At the end of the workshop, you will have a brief outline of a novella you can start working on this year, a list of prospective publishers to submit your work to, and some tips for self-publishing your novella at Amazon, if you prefer to go the indie route.

The workshop includes exercises with every lesson designed to strengthen the concepts discussed and individual feedback from the instructor.

Presenter Bio

Catherine Chant is an active member of the Romance Writers of America (RWA) and a Golden Heart® finalist. She writes rock ‘n’ roll romantic fiction and stories with paranormal twists for young adults. She teaches several online workshops for writers throughout the year and provides instructional articles on computing, gaming and crafts to different websites.

Catherine is currently working on a new young adult suspense novel, and the next book in her Soul Mates series. You can connect with Catherine at her website, CatherineChant.com, on Twitter @Catherine_Chant or on Facebook CatherineChantNovels.

About SRW Online Classes

This class will be held on Yahoo Groups, giving you the flexibility to read class lectures and emails online or in your mailbox (individual emails or digests). Your instructor will post lectures and comments on homework assignments on the group loop. We encourage you to actively participate in the classes to get the most benefit from them, but lurking is fine as well.

To register for a class, go Payments and enter your name and name of the class you want to take. Shortly before the class begins, the moderator will send you an invitation to join the class Yahoo group. The invitation will be sent to the email shown on your PayPal payment, so if you wish to use a different email address or have questions, please contact classes@tucsonrwa.org.

Meeting Dates 2018

January 27: Julia Quinn
February 24: Dawn Falbe (The Itty Bitty Sh***y Committee - the head we get stuck in and how to get out)
March 24: Denise Agnew (Maintaining Your Creative Life)
April 28: Melinda Curtis (Conflict/Character)
May 19: Author Jennifer Ashley
June 23: Author A.L. Jackson
July 28: National Conference Recap
August 25: Rebekah Ganiere (Villains)
September 22: Deb Dixon SPECIAL EVENT
October 27: AGM/NaNoWriMo Launch
November 17: Kristin Nelson, Literary Agent
December 1: Holiday Party